The other seldom seen Kid

What I didn't mention yesterday was that Ian spent some of those six weeks in Strangeways during the riots.
Most kids I knew knew of somebody that had been there. It's about 1 1/2 miles from the street I grew up on,
Ian lived next door to me.

If anybody was going to end up in Strangeways it was going to be me. Though he lived next door to me
my history was very different to Ian's. His father was a hard working man, his mother a house wife,
none of the family had known trouble with the law. Not so for our family, we were born in to trouble,
that's the only way I can put it.

First time I found myself in a police station was in 1977 at six years old. I was with my mother who had
been caught steeling a box of chocolates for my sisters birthday. She was drunk and well known to the
officers of bottle street police station.

MY Da used to say that your first 50 years are the hardest. For me it was the first 20, I've spent
a lot of the last 20 trying to make sense of the first. MY own memory and the memory of others
is all I have to go on. I hadn't seen Ian in 21 years before his photograph was sent to me,
I have no photographs of my first 21 years.


There's BD-AD (Before Diane-After Diane)

The first time I left HMP Hindley was in Jan 1992. I had spent Christmas and New Years Eve there, managed
to break my jaw on the 16th of Dec and spent three days in hospital with a guard by my bed. Two of them
over the three days, they were my only visitors and decent guys. I drank protein shakes through a straw
on Christmas day in Hindley.

I had broken my Jaw on the same wing that Ian had hung himself on. After hospital I stayed
on the hospital wing of the prison and can recall to this day, the fire works going off on NYE
in the sky over the prison. My mother had taken her life 4 months before, but then nobody knows for sure,
it was an open verdict, that or she was killed.

I came back home to Manchester in late Jan 1991. I was back by march but only for three weeks,
in those three weeks I'd  lose my flat and the girl I'd been seeing for a year. When I left Hindley
for the last time In March 1991 everything I owned was in my property bag.

My mind set at that time was, this is how life is, Sean. Not a complaint, no self pity
it was just all I knew and had known for a long time. I could cope with it, I was born
in to it. Ian wasn't; Maybe that's why he took his life I don't know. Things got bad
for him pretty quickly, his relationship with his family deteriorated and his life became chaotic
he must have felt he was alone and just couldn't cope with it

When I met My Wife, Diane I was sleeping in the toilet of a burger bar. I knew the owner
and he knew I'd lost my place. He even gave me £5 a night for looking after the place
and all the food I could eat. It was a hassle free deal while I figured out
what to do next. You might wonder why I didn't go to my family, truth is
we all had our lives to deal with and I was used to dealing with mine.

I met Diane in a club, I was well known in the Madchester days in clubs
I was wearing designer gear, I had plenty of cash, I was cocky but friendly.
You wouldn't know I was sleeping on a toilet floor. Turns out she didn't care
and she actually spent the odd night on that floor with me rather than going home.
She would sleep on a toilet floor if that meant being with me.

That was 19 years ago this week, I've been with her longer than Ian lived.
There's no picture in existence of me and Ian together. Both those kids are long gone,
they only exist together in my memory, I've no picture to prove it.